Claimed for the Leonelli Legacy Read online

  He brought her knees up and rocked back into her hard and fast and a fevered gasp escaped her. She couldn’t lie still, she couldn’t get enough of him and when the voluptuous release of orgasm claimed her she cried out his name. Max rolled over, carrying Tia with him, and slumped back against the pillows. He couldn’t keep his hands off her and that bothered him. What about showing a little restraint? A little cool? When he had woken with Tia’s shapely little body next to his and the smell of her coconut shampoo surrounding him, he had had to have her. It was that simple, that basic, and no sooner did he reach climax than he was wondering how soon he could have her again. The strength of that lustful craving chilled him to the marrow because it was outside his parameters and like nothing he had ever experienced before.

  ‘Thanks,’ Max framed, pausing to drop a kiss on the top of her head and then shifting free of her with alacrity to leave the bed.

  Thanks? Tia ruminated, savouring the split-second, casual kiss but disappointed by the cut and run that followed. Why had he thanked her? Hadn’t she enjoyed herself as much as him? Next time she would thank him, she resolved. She could be polite too. In fact she would out-polite him in spades and see how he liked being thanked as if he had provided a service with his body! But what wonderful service he gave, she reflected helplessly.

  ‘What are we doing today?’ she asked.

  ‘Apparently you’re seeing the family lawyer after breakfast. And no, I don’t know what it’s about. Andrew doesn’t tell me everything,’ Max admitted.

  A couple of hours later, a little man with an egg-shaped bald head and wire-framed spectacles studied her across Andrew’s desk in the library. ‘All you have to do is sign these papers,’ he told her, fanning out a selection of documents in front of her.

  ‘But what is this about?’

  ‘Your inheritance, of course,’ he said in surprise. ‘Your grandmother became a wealthy woman during the course of her marriage to Andrew and she left her estate in trust for her grandchildren. You are the only grandchild and I am now releasing those funds to you.’

  Tia blinked in bewilderment. ‘I have an inheritance?’ she gulped.

  ‘Now that you’re resident in the UK, you do. Your grandmother stipulated that any grandchild had to be resident in this country to qualify, which is why you haven’t heard of this bequest before,’ he explained patiently.

  ‘How much money is involved in this?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘I haven’t had a recent valuation for the jewellery that’s included, and of course her bequest is modest in comparison to your grandfather’s holdings,’ he warned her, ‘but I would estimate that her estate is currently worth, well, almost four hundred thousand pounds...’

  In shock, Tia froze with the pen in her hand. ‘And it’s...mine?’ she exclaimed in disbelief.

  ‘Unconditionally yours,’ the older man declared.

  Tia signed, stumbling out of the door minutes later to track down Max and tell him that the grandmother she had never met had been kind enough to make her a wealthy woman. Max was infuriatingly unimpressed by that revelation.

  ‘It’s ours now...that money,’ Tia pointed out, trying to win a more enthusiastic response from him. ‘Don’t you understand that?’

  ‘I have plenty of money of my own,’ Max divulged gently, amusement tugging at his beautiful mouth. ‘Now thanks to your grandmother you have a nest egg and I’m happy for you.’

  Tia calmed down. ‘I’d like to make a substantial donation to the convent to help the sisters with their work.’

  Max nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘You can do whatever you like with your inheritance, bella mia. While you are with me, however, you will never need to use it,’ Max told her smoothly.

  ‘So, what’s mine is yours doesn’t cut both ways?’ Tia gathered stiffly.

  ‘I have a visceral need to keep my own wife. Call it the caveman in me,’ Max advised.

  Tia breathed in deep and slow. They were not going to argue about money. He didn’t want what he saw as hers...fine! Seemingly he was well enough off to consider her inheritance as a cosy little nest egg barely worthy of excitement. ‘And what about when I find a job?’

  Max looked at her in astonishment and an eyebrow elevated. ‘A job?’

  ‘Yes. I haven’t decided what I want to do yet but I do want to work. I’m not sure I want to do any more studying though,’ she admitted ruefully.

  ‘Take your time and think it over. Andrew supports several charities. Volunteer work could be a practical option for you to begin with,’ he suggested.

  That night Tia came awake with a start when Max made a sound and she switched on the bedside light, only then registering that he was still asleep and clearly dreaming. The bedding was in a tangle round his long, powerful body, perspiration gleaming on his bronzed skin as he cried out again in Italian and in obvious distress. In dismay she shook his shoulder and voiced his name to waken him.

  ‘You were having a bad dream.’

  Max threw himself back against the pillow, breathing rapidly and raking his fingers through his tousled black hair. ‘I don’t get bad dreams,’ he countered defensively.

  ‘You could talk to me about it,’ Tia told him ruefully, not believing that he didn’t get bad dreams for even a second. ‘I wouldn’t tell anyone else. You can trust me.’

  ‘Leave it, Tia,’ Max urged, thinking she would be booking him onto a psychiatric couch if he wasn’t careful. ‘There will always be stuff in my life that I don’t want to discuss.’

  Cornflower-blue eyes rested on him with unnerving directness. ‘I don’t like secrets,’ she said simply. ‘I want to know everything about you.’

  ‘Good luck with that because I’m not a talker,’ Max derided, punching the pillow back into shape and lying back down, making it clear that the conversation was at an end.

  Tia lay awake almost until dawn, wondering if she could settle for a husband with secrets. She didn’t think she could. She hadn’t been joking or exaggerating when she had admitted to wanting to know all that there was to know about him. On her terms, that kind of fearless honesty was the backbone of a strong relationship, but Max didn’t seem to crave that kind of closeness and it worried her.

  * * *

  ‘And this is what you’re wearing tonight?’ Ronnie gasped in admiration as Tia brought the long ice-blue gown out to show her friend. The fabric shimmered as if it were sprinkled with diamonds. ‘Tia...it’s gorgeous!’

  Grayson Industries had started out fifty years earlier and a half-century party was being staged in a luxury London hotel as a celebration. Tia was accompanying Andrew and Max and finally stepping out in public as a Grayson.

  ‘And it’s blue because Max likes me in blue,’ Tia muttered shamefacedly as Teddy capered round her feet, getting in the way.

  The little terrier had been much quieter since he’d emerged from quarantine and was no longer so aggressive. He behaved like Tia’s shadow now though, as if he was afraid that she might disappear again.

  Ronnie shook her dark head. ‘You are such a newly-wed. And Max isn’t missing the single life, is he? There he is with an apartment in London and he still flies back here every night to be with you.’

  Tia was more inclined to put Max’s frequent flying down to his fondness for her grandfather. Unfortunately, she was still feeling very guilty about the discreet visit she had made to the doctor first thing that morning, because she hadn’t been able to bring herself to admit that she believed she needed a pregnancy test to Max or to anyone else. Somehow that little worry had become her secret. And now that little worry had grown into a massive worry...

  But, she didn’t have to share everything with Max, did she? It nagged at her conscience that only a few months ago she had thought less of Max for his unwillingness to share everything and now here she was doing the exact same thing. But then, no doubt like Max, she had her reasons.

  And now that she knew that she
was pregnant she felt stupid for having been so blind because she had always assumed that a woman ought to somehow know such a thing even if the signs beforehand were misleading. They had been married for three months and she had twice had what she believed to be periods. Admittedly both had been unusually irregular and brief, but when she’d told Max that she was out of commission he had smiled and laughed, pointing out that they now had the proof that she wasn’t pregnant. And fool that she was, she had believed that Max must know the symptoms of pregnancy better than she did. When her appetite had failed, when her breasts had become swollen and she had suffered strange moments of dizziness, she had ignored those sensations until she became worried enough to consult a doctor.

  Consequently, Tia had been shattered when the doctor had told her that there was nothing actually wrong with her and she was merely suffering the common side effects of early pregnancy. Apparently her experience of partial periods was not quite as unusual as she had assumed, nor was it a sign that her pregnancy was unstable. But how was she supposed to tell Max that she was pregnant now when he was totally unprepared for that reality? His relief at the seeming proof that she was not pregnant some weeks after their wedding loomed large in her memory. Max had been relieved that she had not conceived and had felt free to reveal that reality.

  Was it any wonder that she had not even told him that she’d intended to visit a doctor? Unsure of how he would react to her secret fear, she had refused to admit her apprehension. In truth, things had been so good between them that she hadn’t wanted to risk tipping the scales by sharing a worry that had seemed groundless.

  Yet in spite of her concern, being married to Max did make her incredibly happy. Oh, nothing was perfect, Tia conceded. He worked too many hours and he could be so preoccupied with business matters that he didn’t always hear what she said. He commuted daily by helicopter between the London headquarters of Grayson Industries and Redbridge Hall. Max hadn’t dared say it but she knew that he didn’t want her to find a job and for the moment she had put that ambition on hold because learning that her grandfather was living on borrowed time had changed her outlook.

  Andrew had only months, not years, ahead of him and she was keen to make the most of what time he had left. She had been devastated when he’d finally confessed that he was terminally ill and initially angry with Max for not telling her sooner, but she had gradually come to understand that Andrew had wanted her homecoming to be a joyous occasion unclouded by anything distressing.

  Tia also understood that it was the very strength of her feelings for Max that had enabled her to adapt to the awareness that her grandfather would not be in her life for much longer. Without Max’s support she would have been far more devastated at the prospect of that coming loss. In truth, she didn’t know when she had fallen for Max because he had been so very important to her from the first moment she had laid eyes on him. His first look, his first smile, his first kiss? It was as if he had cast a spell on her and bound her to him bone and sinew.

  At the same time, Tia was painfully aware that Max didn’t love her back. Maybe she wasn’t the sort of woman who appealed to him on that higher level, she sometimes thought ruefully. In any case, Max kept his own emotions in check as if he feared them and she could hardly credit that he had decided love was not for him based on a distraught teenage girl’s betrayal. Didn’t he realise that everyone got hurt at some stage when it came to love?

  Tia had loved her father long and undeservedly despite his cutting criticisms and lack of interest in her. She loved Max because he made her feel as though everything he did was for her benefit, whether it was asking Andrew’s cook to surprise her with a Brazilian meal or coming home with random little gifts for her that he just so happened to have stumbled on. A handbag the same colour as her eyes? A book he thought she might enjoy? A pendant with ninety-odd sparkling diamonds denoting the number of days they had been married? Max did nothing by halves and he took being a husband seriously. How could she fairly ask for more than that? How could she reasonably expect more from a man who had only proposed to her in the first place because there was a risk he could have got her pregnant?

  And yet, unreasonable or not, Tia recognised that she had a very strong need to be loved. And for a husband whom she could confide anything in at any time. But Max’s very unwillingness to commit himself to that level of frankness had put barriers up between them and made Tia less open to sharing her own private insecurities and worries. Her parents’ lack of love had left her vulnerable and she suspected that Max had had a similar experience with his parents. Unfortunately, that same lack had left Tia craving love to feel secure while it had left Max denying his need for it and shutting the possibility out as being too risky.

  Tia knew that she should not allow Max’s lack of enthusiasm for having a child to influence her thinking. But that was impossible, she thought unhappily. She knew she would prefer to have a family while she was still young but still wondered if being older would make her a better parent. Reminding herself that she could not do worse than her own parents had done with her, Tia swallowed hard. What sort of a mother would she be? Hopefully a better one than her own had been. But what if Inez’s inability to love Tia enough to keep her had been passed on to Tia? She shivered at that fear and prayed that she would be able to love her child like any normal mother.

  But most daunting of all, what was she going to do if the man she loved genuinely didn’t want their baby? Fearful of that pessimistic worry taking control of her before she even had the chance to break that news to Max, Tia thrust it to the back of her mind and suppressed it hard.

  She was hopelessly excited about the baby she carried, she conceded ruefully, daring to hope that, once Max got over the shock of her condition, he would feel the same. But starting a family was a life-altering event, she conceded afresh, and anxiety gripped her. She was only just learning how to live in the modern world and soon she would be responsible for guiding an innocent child through the same process. But she would have Max with her, she told herself urgently. Max had been everywhere, done everything. Max was her failsafe go-to whenever she needed help. But that made her dependent on him and she hated that reality because she didn’t think it was healthy for her to be forced to continually look to him for advice. It made her feel more like a child than an adult and she badly wanted to stand on her own feet. And sadly, she appreciated, a pregnancy was only going to make independence even more of an impossible challenge.

  * * *

  ‘You look stunning,’ her grandfather told her warmly that evening as she climbed out of the limousine, hovering in spite of his objections while he was assisted from the vehicle at the side entrance to the big hotel.

  Max had opted to stay in the city and change at his apartment before meeting them. He emerged to greet them, wonderfully tall, sleek and sophisticated in a dinner jacket and narrow black trousers that provided the ultimate presentation for his wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped, long-legged frame. Her breath snarled in her throat, familiar damp heat licking at the heart of her, as always her body and her senses clamouring on every level for Max’s attention. Sometimes she suspected that she was a shamelessly sexual woman and her colour rose as her eyes met the dark allure of his, her spine tingling as though he had touched her.

  And then the moment was gone as one of the paparazzi who had been waiting in a clump at the front entrance came running to snatch a photo and, with Andrew’s nurse taking charge of the wheelchair, they hurried into the hotel.

  ‘That dress is sensational on you,’ Max husked, gazing down at her with hot dark eyes, the pulse at his groin a deeply unwelcome reminder of his susceptibility to his bride.

  He needed to pull back from Tia; he knew that. He knew that he needed to pull back and give her space. In a few months’ time without Andrew around Tia might decide she wanted her freedom and there would be little point him craving then what he could no longer have. Was that why he had to have her every night? Why going one night without her fel
t like deprivation of the worst kind? Her hunger matched his though, he reminded himself stubbornly. The need was mutual. And being hooked on sex wasn’t that dangerous a weakness, was it?

  Tia caught at his sleeve. ‘I have something to tell you,’ she whispered, needing to share, wanting him to demonstrate the same joy that had been growing in her since she’d first learned that she was carrying their first child.

  She had wasted so much energy tormenting herself with doubts and insecurities while all the time her deep abiding pleasure at the prospect of becoming a mother was quietly building on another level. She was going to have Max’s baby and she was happy about that development and, now that the opportunity had come, she suddenly couldn’t wait to share her news.

  ‘We’ve got official photos first,’ Max warned her.

  So, they posed and smiled with Andrew to mark the occasion and then, Andrew safely stowed in the company of old friends, Max began to introduce her to what felt like hundreds of people. She set her champagne glass down and quietly asked the waiter for a soft drink while she waited for her moment to tell Max about their child.

  The moment came during a lull in the music when everybody was standing around chatting and, for the first time, they were miraculously alone. ‘Remember I said I had something to tell you?’ Tia whispered.

  Lashes as dark and lustrous as black lace lifted on level dark golden eyes and he lifted his chin in casual acknowledgment. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ Tia told him baldly.